Sean Ford

Sean Ford

Every child who enters a youth sport has dreams of scoring a goal, hitting a homerun, scoring a touchdown, or sinking a basket and winning the game. Every child athlete has these dreams and every child athlete should be given equal opportunity to realize those dreams.

Have you ever witnessed this at a game? Starting players step onto the field, or the court, and they play a long shift or series of plays only to be substituted out when they’re winded and replaced with “second string” players? How long do the “second string” players stay on the field? 1 minute? 3 minutes? 4 minutes if they’re lucky? It happens. It absolutely happens. It’s difficult to let all the players play equally, especially in sports like football or basketball where you actually have a starting squad with dedicated positions; it’s hard to do, and it takes some real effort to pull it off. Can it be done? Of course it can, but it takes a dedicated and compassionate coaching staff to pull it off.

We’re lucky in youth lacrosse, where I am a coach, because we don’t have “starting” players and we don’t have dedicated positions; I suspect the same is true of soccer, but maybe less so with baseball where you need to have a pitcher who can actually throw the ball well or someone gets hurt.

It’s my opinion that youth sports in Walpole should strive to ensure that every player leaves a game feeling as though they were part of the outcome, for better or worse. No child athlete deserves to feel left out or worse, unwanted, because the coach decided to play the more skilled players, more often, in the quest to win. That is not to say that the coach should not strategically place the more skilled players in a position to score or affect the outcome of the game, but it should not be at the expense of the other players.

Ok, let’s put this out there, some players are more skilled than others, some players give their all while others cruise, and then others are just naturally gifted with athletic ability.  I will never discount natural ability, drive, or desire, and I will always reward effort, but the idea of equal playing time and offering the players the opportunity to live their dream is so much more important than “the win” or “the great play”. Let the players win as a team, and also let the players lose as a team, either way it’s a character building opportunity that we can’t afford to keep from the young athletes of Walpole. In the end, we want the children of Walpole to leave a sports program as a better person with a strong feeling of self worth and with a head full of positive memories that s/he will take with them for the rest of their lives.

Today’s youth players are tomorrow’s parents, tomorrow’s coaches, and tomorrow’s referees. Today’s coaches in Walpole have a responsibility to set a positive example for our players to ensure that they will carry forward what they’ve learned and what they’ve seen. The idea here is to lead from the front and our players will follow.